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Debrouillard
George Orwell works as a plongeur, or dishwasher, at both the Hotel X and Auberge in Paris. The job is back-breaking and, in Orwell’s estimation, completely without purpose. Plongeurs exist only because smart restaurants do and, given that such businesses are themselves useless, dishing up boulot rather than fulfilling real human needs, there is no reason a man should spend his life in such service.
Plongeur Quotes in Down and Out in Paris and London
The Down and Out in Paris and London quotes below are all either spoken by Plongeur or refer to Plongeur. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 14 Quotes
To a certain extent he is even dirty because he is an artist, for food, to look smart, needs dirty treatment.
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Orwell is now working as a plongeur at the Hotel X with Boris. He has discovered a number of gritty realities about restaurant work, including the fact that most “smart” hotels and restaurants are filthy, poorly run establishments that masquerade as bastions of luxury. Boulot, or the appearance of good service, stands in for real quality. This quotation concerns the cooks at the Hotel X. The way they handle the food would scandalize the Hotel X’s wealthy clientele if they could only see it. Not only do they poke and prod it, but they handle it with dirty fingers and Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus volup
Everywhere in the service quarters dirt festered—a secret vein of dirt running through the great, garish hotel like intestines through a man’s body.
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Orwell is surprised to learn during his time as a plongeur at the Hotel X just how dirty the restaurant really is. Food snuck by the waiters rots in corners, while rats roam freely around the kitchen and basement. The only thing separating the wealthy customers from such filth is a swinging door, but that is enough to keep the clientele in the dark. The customers don’t want to know how grimy the environment is in which their fancy food is cooked, so they look the other way. The fact that Orwell compares the Hotel X to a man’s body Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. E
Chapter 16 Quotes
There was—it is hard to express it—a sort of heavy contentment, the contentment a well-fed beast might feel, in a life which was so simple.
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Having worked as a Hotel X plongeur for a fortnight, Orwell grows used to the lifestyle. At the restaurant, all is frenetic activity. He works grueling 11-hour shifts and has very little free time in which to enjoy or better himself, but at least he is finally able to afford food on a regular basis and knows he can pay his rent. The downside to such a quotidian existence is that it is gradually robbing him of his finer feelings. It is in this chapter that Orwell sees a man murdered on the street outside his hotel, but, because Orwell Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit.
Chapter 17 Quotes
Most of my Saturday nights went in this way. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living.
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In this chapter, Orwell acquaints the reader with a typical Saturday night at the bistro at the foot of the Hotel des Trois Moineaux. The evening starts with several rounds of blissful drinking. The bistro customers grow expansive and content, convinced they are not just a group of dirty day laborers but people of note. Over the course of a single evening, however, Orwell and his companions grow maudlin and depressed. Men abuse and assault women. Many of the drinkers get sick in the street. The very next Saturday, everyone will go through this very same routine all over again. Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asp
Chapter 22 Quotes
If plongeurs thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.
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Having left his job at the Hotel X to take up work as a plongeur at the Auberge, the Russian restaurant run by Boris’s acquaintance, Orwell ponders in this chapter what he contends is the unnecessarily empty life of the Paris restaurant worker. He is concerned specifically with the fate of the plongeur, who, thanks to ridiculously long hours on the job, has no freedom to pursue another job, let alone a life of the mind. He is too exhausted after a day of completing meaningless, menial tasks to consider the fact that he need not submit to such horrible Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas d
People have a way of taking it for granted that all work is done for a sound purpose. They see somebody else doing a disagreeable job, and think that they have solved things by saying that the job is necessary.
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Continuing his treatise dealing with the futile and unfortunate life of the plongeur, Orwell argues that modern society has romanticized hard work. The rich, many of whom spend their days in luxurious idleness, love to say that a job, simply because it is difficult, is obviously worth doing. In fact, Orwell writes, the opposite is often true. He likens the duties of a plongeur to that of a rickshaw driver, suggesting that both workers are put through excruciating physical and mental hardship for very little purpose. “Smart” restaurants and rickshaws exist only because the rich have grown used to being Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores.
Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinion.
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Orwell blames not only the rich for the sad life of the plongeur, but the educated classes as well. The intelligentsia fear the unknown more than they care about the plight of the poor, so they side with the rich to keep the poor in their place. Orwell suggests that, to a certain extent, the tendency of educated people to fear the poor arises—perhaps ironically—from ignorance. Because they seal themselves off from the poor, they have no idea what they’re like, and therefore often assume the worst. A member of the educated class, Orwell sets himself apart by living among Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus
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Plongeur Term Timeline in Down and Out in Paris and London
The timeline below shows where the term Plongeur appears in Down and Out in Paris and London. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 11
...the cellar, the temperature usually ranges between 110-130 degrees. The duties of Orwell’s job as plongeur are many and include making toast, boiling eggs, preparing coffee, rolling butter, and making sure...
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...p.m. The basement staff gets ten minutes for lunch, and when Orwell and his fellow plongeurs and waiters aren’t fetching meals from hot-tempered cooks, they are sweeping floors and polishing brass...
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Chapter 13
...his status in the hotel’s elaborate caste system. Cooks are allowed mustaches. Waiters are not. Plongeurs must, therefore, be clean shaven because they are lower than waiters. Above the cooks is...
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Chapter 14
Plongeurs are, by nature, different. They are stuck in menial labor because their wages are too...
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Chapter 16
...convinced the restaurant will never open. Besides, he’s gotten used to the routine of the plongeur: the waking up before dawn, the hurrying through the Paris streets in greasy clothes to...
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The plongeur, says Orwell, knows only boulot, drinks, and sleep, and sleep is the most important of...
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Chapter 19
...it’s all worth it, for he will again be a waiter, rather than a lowly plongeur.
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Chapter 22
...a life, Orwell ponders this question and comes up with a few answers—namely that the plongeur, with no leisure time, has not the freedom to even consider a different life. The...
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The same can be said for plongeurs. What, after all, is the point of luxurious restaurants? Are they, indeed, necessary? Orwell argues...
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Chapter 23
Freed from his work as a plongeur, Orwell spends his time prior to traveling to London sleeping, drinking beer at the Auberge,...
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